The CRM Success Guide

Transcription

1 White Paper The CRM Success Guide

2 What is Customer Relationship Management (CRM)? CRM is the successful blend of business strategy and technology, which enables a company to achieve measurable business results by aligning People, Process, and Technology. CRM success is driven more by strong strategy supported by appropriate tools than slick technology and flawed business rules. The power and promise of CRM comes when companies deliberately create powerful strategies and select the right CRM technology to help employees execute business processes. People People execute the strategy through CRM processes and technology enable them to make better decisions more quickly. People are the most important and expensive asset in most companies. Focus should be placed on eliminating obstacles that prevent sales and customer service from meeting client needs. Increasing employee effectiveness through better process and technology has significant revenue benefits. Process CRM provides the framework to align the businesses people with the Best Practice across the organization. Process includes the creation and definition of the ideal business processes that will drive revenue growth. Process improvement typically has the single most significant impact on an organizations ability to grow. Better processes translate into better Return on Investment (ROI). Technology Technology provides a centralized platform for all critical business information. Technology provides the framework to reinforce the ideal business processes mentioned above. Provides automated calculation of key metrics and data that enable faster decisions that support the business processes. Supports the ability to create a 360 view of the Prospect and Customer. Includes user interfaces and visual dashboards to guide the business. 2

3 CRM Success Effective CRM aligns people, process, and technology to produce measurable sales growth and achieve defined goals for your organization. In implementing CRM with over 300 businesses, ISM has identified three key elements necessary for successful CRM. Without these three success factors, many companies fail to get measurable results from their CRM technology and do not see a solid ROI from their CRM efforts. The software, in most cases, does not determine whether CRM will drive sales and produce results. Lack of Stakeholder Commitment, overemphasis on technology over Business Processes and People, and failure to establish a CRM Roadmap are most often the reason a company fails to successfully implement CRM. Stakeholder Commitment Purchasing CRM software or receiving authorization to do so does not guarantee that all the key people in your organization are on-board or fully understand the commitment necessary to implement CRM. While it is certainly a good sign that the decision-makers have chosen to invest in CRM, an organization spreads far beyond those controlling the purse strings. The sharp end of the spear, as we like to say, is the sales management team. Sales managers ultimately will be the ones holding salespeople and others accountable for using the CRM technology in alignment with the organization's core business processes. Without the full support of your sales management team, a successful CRM implementation will be difficult at best. Experienced salespeople, perhaps the sales leaders in your organization, may have serious objections to making any changes to their proven methods. In some cases, there will be flatout rebellion in the sales force to implementing CRM. These objections can be overcome in a variety of ways, but the one key factor is that the company aligns its pay structure, sales processes, and well-defined goals with their CRM implementation. This cannot happen if the key stakeholders in the company are not committed to the full CRM plan. As a part of a business case ISM provides to companies at no charge, we help identify the key stakeholders and develop an initial plan to engender commitment to CRM. 3

4 Business Process and People It's easy to get excited about CRM software. The technology provides ways to keep in better contact with existing customers, more effectively manage leads, measure results, and standardize business processes. But the software will not do this on its own! A common mistake many organizations make is emphasizing technology over business processes and people. Simply buying the software, whether it is hosted or on-premise, does not ensure the hoped for results will actually be realized. Prior to implementing CRM software, a business should have a healthy understanding of the business processes already in place and know what is currently working for their sales team. By identifying the effective processes already in place, you will know how CRM needs to blend within your organization's unique structure. The CRM software is a tool to standardize your business processes and achieve measurable sales results. When you view the business processes and the people following them over CRM software, you are more likely to achieve success by the use of that software. In fact, CRM should not be viewed as software at all. CRM, as stated above, aligns people, process, and technology. Without the people in your organization and established business processes driving its use, you are not likely to achieve measurable results with CRM. The business case ISM provides at no charge also includes help in identifying the effective business practices already in place and possible processes which are not achieving results. Help from outside of your organization can often provide necessary insight to the effectiveness of your business processes. The CRM Roadmap While perhaps a bit cliché, the adage failure to plan is planning to fail is never more true than with CRM. A company can easily be convinced of the benefits of CRM, but without an effective plan the implementation will most likely fail. Answering key questions will help you develop an effective CRM Roadmap: What are the core goals or plans of the organization? Where are we today? What works today? What does not work today? Where do we want to be tomorrow? 4

5 Once those key questions have been answered, you will be able to identify a project team, establish a timeline, and project the desired ROI for your CRM efforts. The CRM Roadmap for your company will contain the proper design for implementing the technology and aligning it with your business processes and people. Getting Started The best place to start with CRM is to build a solid business case that clearly outlines "how" CRM will produce impact for your business. This will establish the benefits that drive stakeholder commitment and clearly set expectations for defining business process and building the CRM roadmap. The Business Case We've mentioned a couple of times that we at ISM provide a business case at no charge to help you gain a better understanding of what your company needs to follow the three success factors provided in this paper. With hundreds of successful CRM implementations under our belt, let ISM help you reach your goals and achieve real growth for your business. We welcome your call: